After the Storm

A creative-non-fiction piece that explores the experience of growing up between Hong Kong and Manchester, moving through vivid memories of heat, storms, hospitals, and high-rise cityscapes. Split across continents under the BNO migration route, my family becomes defined by distance— my father who stays in Hong Kong, my mother trying to rebuild a life in the UK, and a childhood suspended between two climates and cultures. Through lyrical reflections on weather, domestic spaces, and political memory, the piece examines displacement, longing, and the fragile, shifting idea of home.

Antiques and People

Antiques and People explores the intimate worlds of three individuals whose lives revolve around objects—Seiya, the collector–shopkeeper of Nouen, and Duncan and Jeff, directors of Antiques Conservation Ltd and master restorers of European, British, and Asian art.

The project traces how each of them uses objects to preserve memory, culture, and craftsmanship in distinct yet interconnected ways. Seiya curates vintage clothing, Japanese products, books, and folk records with a sensibility shaped by his upbringing in Japan, travels abroad, and a lifelong devotion to the emotional resonance of secondhand items. Duncan and Jeff, who met as Fine Art students before unexpectedly entering the world of conservation, bring a maker’s precision to the restoration of ceramics, terracotta, enamelware, Ming dynasty vases, and Art Deco installations. Their workshop—part studio, part archive—reflects decades of learning through hands-on repair, where rusted, cracked, or fading objects are brought back to life with careful skill.

Together, their stories form a study of people who work with the past—one through collecting, the others through preserving—revealing how antiques become vessels of personal history, artistic knowledge, and cultural continuity.

Objects in Focus 

Objects in Focus is a series that examines individual objects—Sherlock Holmes prints, porcelain pieces, Socialist Realism paintings, and more—as entry points into larger cultural, political, and historical conversations. Each object becomes a case study, inviting viewers to slow down, look closely, and consider how meaning is constructed through material forms.

Rather than treating objects as neutral artefacts, the project engages critically with their origins, their circulation, and the narratives they carry or conceal. A Sherlock Holmes print becomes a lens on British identity and literary myth-making; a porcelain vessel speaks to global trade, imitation, and aesthetic value; a Socialist Realism painting reveals the tension between propaganda, labour, and artistic intent.

By foregrounding the object itself—its surface, its damage, its craftsmanship, its context—Objects in Focus encourages a deeper understanding of how things shape the way we see culture, history, and ourselves.